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I think the early ones were built more by hand, with some "learn as you go" type redesigns, so the later cars were more consistent.
You could get lucky and get one with no problems, but you take a bigger risk with the very early cars.

I don't see much "wear and tear" in the photos but photos often don't show stuff that is easily visible in person. If the car only has 27.5K miles on it would be odd to have it show a lot of signs of use.
The price of $49.5K for a 1.5 with that mileage seems about $10K under market to me. Maybe it's a bargain, maybe it's a fair price, impossible to know for sure without seeing and driving the car and verifying the maintenance and repair history. Caveat emptor...

Correct. In person the paint was kind of abused for only having 22,000 miles. Lots of swirl marks and three of the body panels had a gouge or some kind of scratch in the paint.
Looks like it was driven as the guy's beater DD for a while!

It looks virtually like my #255. It appears someone will get a bargain. It has been driven so there is likely some paint wear. It is hard to keep a car perfect if you drive it. I would not be worried about issues as it is very likely any issues were found in 25,000 miles and have been addressed.

If you're looking to drive a Roadster in a more relaxed fashion (rather than babying it a little too much...), this might be a great way to do that at a good price. If I didn't have too many cars already, it would be tempting.

Unless this is spoken for, is there anyone in the area that would be willing to look at this car and report back? I'm very seriously considering it. With the money saved I could easily afford a repaint to take car of any paint damage, and that way I could have the color I really want. And not having to worry about the paint makes it a lot easier to have shipped 3000 miles.

But I'm concerned about wear and tear other than the paint. It seems like a really low price even with aesthetic damage. Besides the aforementioned learning curve, was there really any difference between the Founders Series and later 1.5 models?